The "contact us" button is a direct line to the Editors. Except, by direct line I mean "an automated email link that goes to a overflowing shared account". Back when the ship was shiny and new, it was a way for the Captain to get feedback from Shipmates (or whomever) and then parse out relevant tasks to the Crew.

But times have changed - the Editors are less active with the Ship now, and the main things they forward to the Admins from the "contact us" line are problems with accounts. The discussion boards are still fairly healthy, though with much less changeover in membership, and some other features have languished. There's nothing to do about that for now.

Posted
Thanks, Rook, for your reply. As I suspected, the main life of the Ship is now the discussion boards.

I remain concerned that these are now marooned in an increasingly obsolete shell which is the shipoffools.com website. It is surely not beyond the wit of some shipmates (perhaps even myself) to give the shell a good cleaning, removing obsolete items such as:

- Contact Us !!!! (which you say is largely defunct) - Caption Competition - Search engine (some of my previous contact-us attempts have been about this - unless you know which thread to look in, it's a pretty useless facility)

and other barnacles, rust spots, holes etc

--------------------I don't care if the glass is half full or half empty - I ordered a cheeseburger.Posts: 265 | Registered: May 2001
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Posted
Felafool, it pays to remember that this is not a democracy and that we are here at the sufferance of a fairly benign owner, who has other things to do with his life.

It might be nice if Simon and The Ancient Mariner were minded to donate the ship to shipmates, but they have no obligation to do so. As far as I understand they have rather a lot of other things on their plate to be getting on with.

Mostly we should all be thankful for the staff and the fact that the Captain is content to let us get on with it.

Posted
Compared with some other websites whose owners tinker with them all the time, the Ship works fairly well, and my presence here proves that any idiot can use it. The bits that don't work aren't very important, and if something really matters to you, there's usually someone who will either give advice or laugh at you. My car is the same: getting on and getting rusty, but the damn thing works and does what I need it to do. My body is like that, too.

No, what it boils down to is that the admins are not in charge of making decisions about any of the things you would like to have changed.
Posts: 24449 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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Posted
Thank you. I managed to plough through it. It still seemed to involve Paypal. I hope my (small) donation doesn't mean I've been dragged into Paypal in some sense, although I haven't opened and won't open a Paypal account.

Posted
At the bottom of the linked-to page you should see "Don't have a PayPal account? Use your credit card or bank account (where available)" and a Continue button. If you click the Continue button, you should be able to charge a donation to your credit card of choice without involving PayPal.

--------------------"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.Posts: 10516 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
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Posted
I very rarely visit The Styx page but did so just now; that was an interesting topic.

--------------------I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.Posts: 3067 | From: UK | Registered: May 2007
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